Johnson Column: Germany a tough test for U.S. soccer

American need win or draw to guarantee second-round stop

By
David Johnson, The Saratogian

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

The final stop on the U.S. soccer team’s “ghosts of World Cups past” tour is the Arena Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, for a noon match Thursday. The Group G opponent is three-time world champion Germany.

The Americans can advance to the knockout stage of the tournament with a win or a draw. If Germany (four points) wins, the U.S. (four points) will have to rely on Portugal (one point) and Ghana (one point) to draw to guarantee safe passage. If Portugal or Ghana win, however, get your goal differential calculators out and hope for the best.

This isn’t the first time Germany is in position to derail the U.S. in a World Cup, in fact, its happened twice in the past 16 years.

The first occasion was a group stage match at France 1998. The tournament turned out to be a disaster for the Americans thanks in part to a 2-0 loss to Germany in their first game. Current U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann was the German captain that day and even scored the second goal of the match in the 64th minute. The other notable occurrence from that game is German enforcer Jens Jeramies trying to remove U.S. star Claudio Reyna’s kidney with his foot early in the contest.

Four years later, Germany ended the Americans’ tournament with a 1-0 win in the quarterfinals of South Korea-Japan 2002. Current ESPN analyst Michael Ballack scored the goal on a first-half header, but the play many fans remember is U.S. defender Greg Berhalter’s close-range shot being blocked by the hand of German midfielder Torsten Frings on the goalline. The no-call will likely be mentioned once or twice during the broadcast Thursday.

With the close ties between Klinsmann and his former team — he also coached Germany to a third place finish in 2006 — many of the questions before the match focused on possible collusion, since a draw is enough to advance both teams.

The truth is the Klinsmann and current German coach Joachim Low don’t need a backroom handshake to get the required draw they need. They don’t even have to switch formations. The teams will likely ask midfielders to be cautious going forward and value possession even more than usual. As long as neither team is leading, the final 20 minutes of the match could turn into a glorified game of kickball.

To get to that point, however, the American defense will have to play error free — something it hasn’t done up to this point in the tournament. Right back Fabian Johnson has been an outstanding two-way player for the past month, but he switched off for one second in the Ghana match to allow Andre Ayew to get behind him and score the game-tying goal. Similarly, center defender Geoff Cameron’s duff directly resulted in Nani’s early goal and Cameron, Matt Besler and Omar Gonzalez each failed to get a body on Silvestre Varela to prevent the Portuguese substitute from tying the match in the 95th minute.

I can’t imagine the type of rant goalkeeper Tim Howard, famous for screaming at his defense, went on after each of those errors.

Despite the costly mistakes, and no matter what happens Thursday, the play of the Americans up until this point in the tournament should be applauded. The team previously followed up successful World Cup campaigns in 1994 and 2002 with poor efforts in 1998 and 2006. Klinsmann’s 2014 squad is actually in position to build on the success of the 2010 team. The second round is within reach, “Captain America” Clint Dempsey and the rest of the team have 90 minutes left to prove they belong there.